Category: Higher education

Fully-funded Economics PhDs at QUB

Fellow economic historian Chris Colvin has brought my attention to the fact that the Management School at Queen’s University Belfast has three fully-funded scholarships for full-time PhD students in Economics, starting October 2014. In terms of thesis topics, they will consider all areas of economics, finance or management but they are particularly keen to recruit  students in the following areas:

  • game theory and mechanism design with some emphasis on the economics of networks and institutions;
  • economic history, including business and financial history; anthropometrics and demography; health, wealth and inequality over the long run; politics, democracy and growth; the economic history of partition in Ireland;
  • health economics, labour economics, and the economics of education;
  • long-term development and the economics of crime;
  • behavioural/experimental economics with some emphasis on social learning.

(As someone working on wealth and inequality over the long run and increasingly interested in the economics of partition, I’d particularly encourage applications in those two areas!)

The good news for successful applicants is that the studentships, which each last for 3 years, include both university fees and annual stipend of £13,863 per annum. The closing date for applications is Friday 20 June 2014 – full details are here.

Rebranding Trinity College Dublin

April the first seems like as good a day as any to open a thread on the recent TCD rebranding initiative, which according to Brian Lucey cost the cash-strapped university around €100,000. A few questions arise:

Has it occurred to TCD that it actually has a very strong brand (how I hate that word), and that this may in fact be the reason that it does reasonably well in reputation-based surveys?

Isn’t the new shield just a little bit chintzy, and was the old one not much nicer?

If they are going to make a big deal about the book in the new crest not necessarily being the Bible of the old one, is there not a problem with the name of the College itself (my kids pointed that one out before collapsing in a fit of giggles)?

Isn’t the whole idea of “rebranding” a university just a little bit second division, and does this exercise not risk damaging the reputation of the institution?

Is there any chance that having spent €100,000 on the exercise, the promised staff consultations will be any more than a box-ticking exercise?

University rankings, 2014

Always a controversial topic, the latest university rankings by QS have been published. More details here. The aim is to identify the top 200, meaning something of an abrupt stop once they get to 200. (I feel the need to put a disclaimer here that I post this not because I stand over the ranking’s exact methodology, but rather rankings such as these are used by both prospective students and policymakers, hence they are important.)

Of interest to this readership, the ranking of Economics Departments in Europe is here. Trinity features in the 51-100 cohort and UCD in the 100-150. (Digression: nice to see a popular ranking recognise the bounds of uncertainty, although this may not be the best way to do it.) Six of the top seven Economics departments in Europe are British, with one each from Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and France also in the top dozen.

9th-level Ireland has a handy table of Ireland’s top ranking departments across all disciplines from 2011 to 2014. Four departments (all in TCD) are in the top 50 in their discipline. A further 18 are in the 51-100 group (including three law departments).

Irish Economic Policy Conference 2014: Economic Policy after the Bailout

Organised jointly by the ESRI, Dublin Economic Workshop, UL, and UCD’s Geary Institute, this year’s policy conference (see previous years here and here) will be on the theme of economic policy after the bailout. This conference brings policy makers, politicians, civil servants and academics together to address this question of national importance. The venue will be the Institute of Bankers in the IFSC. (Click here for a map).


Date: 31st January 2013

Venue: Institute of Bankers, IFSC

Programme

9:15 – 10:45: Plenary: The Impact of the Crisis on Industrial Relations

Chair: Aedín Doris (NUI Maynooth)

  • Kieran Mulvey (Labour Relations Commission) Prospects for Pay and Industrial Relations in the Irish Economy
  • Shay Cody (IMPACT Trade Union) “The impact of the crisis on industrial relations – a public service focus”
  • Michelle O’Sullivan/Tom Turner (University of Limerick) “The Crisis and Implications for Precarious Employment’”

10.45-11.15: Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45: 2A. Migration and the Labour Market

Chair: Philip O’Connell (UCD Geary Institute)

  • Piaras MacÉinrí (UCC) ‘Beyond the choice v constraint debate: some key findings from a recent representative survey on emigration’
  • Peter Muhlau (TCD) “Social ties and the labour market integration of Polish migrants in Ireland and Germany”
  • Alan Barrett (ESRI & TCD) and Irene Mosca (TCD) “The impact of an adult child’s emigration on the mental health of an older parent”

2B. Economics: Teaching and Practice

Chair: Ronan Gallagher (Dept of Public Expenditure and Reform)

  • Brian Lucey (TCD): “Finance Education Before and After the Crash”
  • Liam Delaney (Stirling): “Graduate Economics Education”
  • Jeffrey Egan (McGraw-Hill Education) “The commercial interest in Third Level Education”

12:45 – 1:45: Lunch Break

1:45 – 3:15: 3A. Health and Recovery

Chair: Alex White, TD, Minister of State

  • David Madden (UCD) “Health and Wealth on the Roller-Coaster: Ireland 2003-2011”
  • Charles Normand TCD) and Anne Nolan (TCD & ESRI) “The impact of the economic crisis on health and the health system in Ireland”
  • Paul Gorecki (ESRI) ‘Pricing Pharmaceuticals: Has Public Policy Delivered?”

3B. Fiscal Policy

Chair: Stephen Donnelly TD

  • Seamus Coffey (UCC) “The continuing constraints on Irish fiscal policy”
  • Diarmuid Smyth (IFAC) ‘IFAC: Formative years and the future’
  • Rory O’Farrell, (NERI) “Supplying solutions in demanding times: the effects of various fiscal measures”

3:15 – 3:30: Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00: Plenary: Debt, Default and Banking System Design

Chair: Fiona Muldoon (Central Bank of Ireland)

  • Gregory Connor (NUI Maynooth) “An Economist’s Perspective on the Quality of Irish Bank Assets”
  • Kieran McQuinn and Yvonne McCarthy (Central Bank of Ireland) “Credit conditions in a boom and bust property market”
  • Colm McCarthy “Designing a Banking System for Economic Recovery”
  • Ronan Lyons (TCD) “Household expectations and the housing market: from bust to boom???”

This conference receives no funding, so we have to charge to cover expenses like room hire, tea and coffee. The registration fee is €20, but free for students. Please click here or on the link below to pay the fee, then register by attaching your payment confirmation to an e-mail with your name and affiliation to emma.barron@ucd.ie. [Block bookings can be made by purchasing the required number of registrations and then sending the list of names to emma.barron@ucd.ie]

Please click here to pay the registration fee.

Marketing and academic reputation

Leaving aside the empirical question of what it is that, in fact, leads to universities having international “brand recognition”, I would be very curious to know how much the “review of its brand” that Trinity is apparently engaged in is costing the university in these difficult times.